Even with the resumption of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, the U.S. and Cuba have unfinished business to take care of.

There is the issue of terrorism — the terrorism that U.S.-based exile extremist outfits perpetrated against Cuba.

These groups sought for decades through violence and terror to prevent a rapprochement between Cuba and the United States.

Their attacks included arson, bombings and targeted assassinations and claimed many Cuban lives.

Declassified documents show the CIA trained a lot of these terrorists in the early 1960s as part of the failed Bay of Pigs landing and the violent Operation Mongoose directed toward regime change in Cuba.

Cuban exiles participated in the infamous Operation Condor, set up by South American dictatorships to eliminate their foes abroad. It included the 1976 murder of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in the streets of Washington, D.C., a crime that Cuban expatriates carried out.

The vilest of all acts that these U.S.-based extremists committed was the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner in Barbados, in which all 73 occupants were killed.

Exile militant Luis Posada Carriles has been directly linked to this crime in declassified CIA and FBI documents. He is currently free and living in Miami, and the Cuban government is requesting his extradition.

While the U.S. government has tolerated right-wing terrorism against Cuba, it has also funded political dissent in the island to the tune of millions of dollars per year through entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy. This seemingly harmless support is in blatant violation of international norms, which frown upon such meddling in the internal affairs of foreign nations.

The Obama administration needs to acknowledge these legitimate grievances of Cuba. Otherwise, true reconciliation between the two nations will still be a long way away.

Carmelo Ruiz is a Puerto Rican author and journalist who directs the Latin America Energy and Environment Monitor and runs a bilingual blog on journalism and current affairs. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues, affiliated with The Progressive magazine.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Donald Trump is the George Wallace of the XXI Century. The similarities are astounding.

Many Americans lead empty lives. They have no true reason for living. Since the ascent to the White House of Dubya and Obama, the USA has gone steadily downhill. Capitalist billionaires and millionaires are doing extremely well, while the "average" American has a hard time making ends meet every month.

Therefore, they turn to alcoholism, drugs, and in the political arena they turn to sensationalism and entertainment. Welcome to the Trump Circus.

Americans are extremely stupid if they think that a GOP billionaire will make their lives any better. If elected, El Donald would continue the failed policies of Dubbya and Obama.

If you want to find examples of governments restricting the flow of information on the internet for political purposes, look to the United States and its allies, and not to the low-level of internet use in Cuba, which, notwithstanding press reports to the contrary, is a consequence of Cuba’s comparatively low-level of economic development, not communist ‘totalitarianism.’

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, President of the Councils of State and Ministers, received Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of Havana, on the afternoon of Monday August 17.

During the cordial meeting, the two discussed the progress of preparations for His Holiness Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Cuba and issues of mutual interest between the Cuban State and the Catholic Church on the island.

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is working to reach a deal with Cuba by year’s end that would allow travelers to fly on scheduled commercial flights between the countries, U.S. officials say, chipping away at a travel ban without requiring Congress to lift it.

The agreement would allow airlines to establish regular service between the U.S. and Cuba as early as December, officials said, marking the most significant expansion of economic and tourism ties between the U.S. and Cuba since the 1950s, when Americans regularly traveled back and forth to Havana.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Same old shit (a.k.a. mierda in Spanish) from the Miami and N.J. Cuban fascists as John Kerry raised the flag yesterday at the reopened USA embassy in Havana.

Marco Rubio: (5-6% support on GOP presidential candidates polls.)

"The deal with Cuba threatens America's moral standing in our hemisphere and around the world, it brings legitimacy to a state sponsor of terror, and further empowers an ally of China and Russia that sits just 90 miles from our shore."

Robert Menendez: (indicted on federal corruption charges recently.)

"This is the embodiment of a wrongheaded policy that rewards the Castro regime's brutality at the expense of the Cuban people's right to freedom of expression and independence. This is a one-sided deal that is a win for the Cuban regime and a loss for the Cuban people."

These two Cuban fascists and the declining empire can never live up to the fact that Cubans run the island now, and that the clock can not be turned back to before January 1, 1959.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Havana (AFP) - Fidel Castro marked his 89th birthday Thursday by insisting the United States owes Cuba "many millions of dollars" because of the half-century-old American trade embargo.

Castro spoke out in an essay published in local media a day before US Secretary of State John Kerry makes a historic visit to Cuba to reopen the US embassy as part of the countries' restoration of diplomatic relations.

JG: After the capture of Santa Clara, Cuba's third largest city, by Ernesto 'Che' Guevara at the end of 1958, U.S. supported dictator Fulgencio Batista regime collapsed immediately. At 2:00 am on New Years' Day 1959 he fled the island. He would have been captured and executed had he stayed.

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration doesn't plan to invite Cuban dissidents to Secretary of State John Kerry's historic flag-raising at the U.S. Embassy in Havana on Friday.(Source: news.yahoo.com)

Friday, August 07, 2015

7 August 2015"Cuban tourism officials and U.S. boating aficionados and entrepreneurs are salivating about a possible return to the go-go days before Cuba's communist revolution, when thousands of well-heeled Americans a year sailed to Havana for long weekends of tropical leisure." (ABC News)JG: Cuba and their officials want to go back to the days of Fulgencio Batista in the 1950's? Raul Castro must be smoking some very very potent mawi wawi!Or is this just another example about the Yankee imperialists speculating and dreaming about the golden days of their favorite "democrat" in Havana?

"Let me set the record straight on a couple of things. The first is, the evidence is now clear that the majority of people coming across the border are not from Mexico. They’re coming from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. Those countries are the source of the people that are now coming [to the U.S.] in its majority."

Wednesday, August 05, 2015

Seven decades after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, a 99-year-old veteran refuses to give up his life's mission — to ensure nuclear warfare never happens again.

The city of Hiroshima will early Thursday (7 p.m. ET Wednesday) commemorate the 1945 moment "Little Boy" instantly killed at least 60,000 people. Three days later, "Fat Man" killed around 40,000 others in Nagasaki.

The bombings are credited with ending World War II but they left two cities in ruins and generations suffering the effects of radiation poisoning. Tens of thousands more later died from cancer and other illnesses.

Only way forward is to eliminate nuclear arms

People wait in queue to offer prayers for the victims of the 1945 atomic bombing, in the rain at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, in this photo taken by Kyodo August 6, 2014, on the 69th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing.
PHOTO: REUTERS / KYODO

Monday, August 03, 2015

Rep Tom Emmer was quoted today by the New York Times as saying the following:“The embargo has benefited the Castro regime and hurt the Cuban people.”He, of course, is 100% wrong. Fanatical capitalists always hate socialist leaning governments. The Cuban people support their government, even with all its defects, shortcomings, and/or mistakes.

The failure for the Cuba embargo belongs to the Yankee imperialist government of the USA.Other that the genocidal Zionist Jews of Israel and the Cuban fascists in Mimi and New Jersey, the Cuba embargo does not have any support among the civilized community of nations of our planet. It has been been condemned for 22 consecutive years at the General Assembly of the United Nations.Maybe visiting martians to our planet will believe Mr. Emmer. A reminder for Mr. Emmer:"A Pew Research Center poll released on July 21 showed that 72 percent of Americans support ending the embargo against Cuba, up from 66 percent in January." (NYT)Mr Emmer is just another Johnny Come-Lately to opposing the Cuba embargo/blockade. It is the latest chic thing to do by capitalists in the USA. They will never admit their failures.

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